


The Dead Unsung Heroes Club

by ckret2



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, M/M, Post-Canon, Secret Solenoid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-05 02:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17316665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: One moment, Wheeljack is dead. The next he's on the inside of a dark bubble-shaped planet listening as Starscream explains that Unicron was defeated, they're somewhere midway between life and death, and Starscream hauled Wheeljack there because he needs an engineer's help upgrading some busted Unicron parts into a machine that will let Starscream get back to the living world.But the longer Wheeljack helps Starscream, and the more he talks with the other mechs scattered through limbo with them, the more certain he is that Starscream is keeping secrets from Wheeljack about the purpose of this project—first and foremost that his motives aren't nearly as selfish as he's led Wheeljack to believe.





	The Dead Unsung Heroes Club

**Author's Note:**

> This is my gift fic this year for [Secret Solenoid](http://secretsolenoid.tumblr.com), for Ray! I'm not sure if Ray has an account on AO3 or not, if so I'll add that in here later.
> 
> The request that I was writing: IDW RiD/TAAO: Starscream/Wheeljack, Prompt: bonding over doing something science-y.

The afterlife wasn't something Wheeljack had spent a lot of time thinking about, but he supposed that if he were to guess what it would be like, he wouldn't have guessed this. The Afterspark, if that was what it was, was a tiny pinprick of light, so impossibly small, so impossibly far away and yet so close it might have been within him. In a way, it reminded him of... but no, he supposed there was really nothing he could compare it to. 

It was so small. How was he supposed to fit into it? But then the more he stared at it, the more he realized how dazzling the tiny light was. Maybe it wasn't small; maybe Wheeljack was the small one, closed up so tight he could only get a glimpse at the light. Maybe if he opened up... unraveled... piece by piece, let himself dissolve and drift away... and the more he stretched out, the more he dissipated, the more he left behind who he had once been, the brighter the light got, until... 

Just before he dissolved into nothing, something behind him reached out and grabbed a hand he didn't remember he had, and said a name he'd almost forgotten. And then he was pulled backwards into the dark. 

The next thing he knew was Starscream. 

* * *

"That was a close one. We almost lost you," Starscream said, a little too close to Wheeljack and smiling like he meant it. "A few more minutes—or whatever passes for minutes around here, I don't know—and you would have been gone for good. You're welcome." 

Wheeljack was getting a little too used to waking up from certain death, disoriented and confused, to be greeted by an overexcited Starscream in a new body. "You're blue." 

Starscream beamed. " _More_ blue, yes." 

"And... curvy? Your optics are magenta." Nobody had magenta optics. 

Starscream was practically preening under the factual analysis of his new frame—thrusters humming, wings tilting. "Do you like it?" 

Wheeljack shrugged vaguely. "I thought you looked nice in red." 

Starscream immediately scowled. "Excuse me. This is my body. My _true_ body! It's how I'm _supposed_ to look." 

"Oh," Wheeljack said, completely uncomprehending. "Okay." 

He was, he realized, splayed on the ground; he very carefully sat up and looked around. "... Hold on. It's... is this the... that city in the center of Cybertron?" 

"It _looks_ like it, doesn't it?" Starscream scanned the empty organic city and blank black sky with obvious disdain. "It's a pity, but we can rip out the trees." 

"What's... where are... Where's Unicron?" 

" _Primus._ I expect he's off cuddling with Optimus somewhere." 

Wheeljack gave Starscream a blank look. He was still too dazed to be shocked. 

Starscream shrugged. "Yeah. I know." 

"What about Elonia?" 

"Saved! The population, anyway." Starscream clapped a hand on Wheeljack's shoulder, beaming, and Wheeljack jolted as his fuzzy thoughts jerked back into focus around the point where Starscream was touching him. "You did great work. You rescued everyone except yourself. I don't think anyone's bothered to recognize your sacrifice besides me, though. But hey, welcome to the unsung heroes club. We don't do it for the glory, right?" Starscream, who could probably count on one hand the number of things he hadn't done for glory, gave Wheeljack a rakish and thoroughly convincing smile. He tried to stand back up, but Wheeljack clapped a hand over Starscream's to keep it in place; so, after a moment of hesitation, Starscream knelt down next to Wheeljack.  

His thoughts were coming back into focus now, and working at double time trying to piece together what had happened since Elonia.  "Hold on—'except myself'? What's going on? Where's the sky? Where are the other people? Why is—no, how—no, _why_ is Optimus cuddling Unicron? What do you mean, 'unsung heroes'? Did..." He looked at Starscream, somewhere between nervous and horrified. "Are we dead?" 

Starscream didn't look back at him. "Wwwellll..." He raised his shoulders, grimacing uncertainly. "Define 'dead.'" 

Wheeljack slid out from under Starscream's hand, flopped on his back, and stared at the blank sky. 

"Welcome to infraspace." 

Wheeljack made a strangled noise. 

* * *

Starscream left Wheeljack alone for a bit to adjust. 

Well. "Alone." He spent about half an hour doing aerial acrobatics through the empty sky directly above Wheeljack. Wheeljack kind of thought Starscream was trying to sell him on the new body. Wheeljack kind of thought the look was a little "Thundercracker develops Primus apotheosis," but it was growing on him. 

Once he'd recovered sufficiently, Starscream filled him in. 

Unicron was dead, but so was Cybertron and every one of its colonies except Earth. They'd all evacuated from one planet to another and _most_ people had made it. Some had died. Most didn't! But a whole lot of stars were eaten. Starscream hadn't heard about how the rest of the galaxy was faring yet. 

Anyone who'd died in direct contact with the Talisman's energy had ended up here, in infraspace, the Afterspark's waiting room. Starscream was here, of course—died activating the Talisman to burrow its way into Unicron, as he explained to Wheeljack in excessive detail, and of course Optimus was the only one getting recognition. Blurr was here, another member of Starscream's "unsung heroes" club. Kup was around somewhere, he liked to tell everyone tales about how this place was just like the Dead Universe but not as bad, and what's his name that guy with six modes—anyway, a load of Autobots, so they and Starscream politely tolerated each other. Optimus was shacking up with the organic that made/was Unicron and wanted to be left alone, and Starscream, for one, was _more_ than happy to respect his wishes. Sometimes Shockwave ducked in for a few minutes, but they threw stuff at him and shouted insults until he stopped astral projecting from Prowl's prison ship. 

And then Wheeljack had to lay down and stare at the sky again. 

* * *

"So," Wheeljack asked, "How do—how do you know what's going on back in—what's the opposite of infraspace? Ultraspace?" 

"We've just been calling it 'the real world,'" Starscream said. "Wouldn't ultraspace be..." he made a gesture like something leapfrogging over an item, " _beyond_ normal space?" 

"Oh. I guess so." Wheeljack shrugged. 

They were sitting on the rim of a nonfunctional stone fountain. It was a little low for comfort, but it was nearby and there weren't exactly Cybertronian-scale benches around here. Starscream kept switching between crossing his legs and pulling his knees halfway to his chest; Wheeljack's legs were stretched out in front of him.  

"Okay, how do you know what's going on in the real world, then? You haven't been getting news from Shockwave, have you?" 

Starscream scoffed. "Please! As if I'd accept anything from that one-eyed, two-faced spawn of a glitch—even information. In fact, I'd go so far as to say _especially_ information." 

That was a bit more emphatic than Wheeljack had expected. Sneering disdain, sure—but not that scowl, not that venom. "Something happen?" 

Besides the ores, the time travel, the attempt to destroy the universe, the weird manipulative mind game he'd played with their entire species, and the fact that he'd spent like three fourths of recorded Cybertronian history pretending to be a horse. Starscream wasn't bothered by what people did to other people. Despite what most believed about Starscream, Wheeljack didn't doubt that Starscream _did_ have a strong sense of right and wrong; it was just that, for him, most of the time, right and wrong were merely an intellectual exercise. He wouldn't start burning in rage over what Shockwave had done—even if Cybertron, or the galaxy, or the entire universe should fall—until and unless it affected Starscream personally. 

And Starscream evidently understood that was what Wheeljack was going for, because he didn't waste time reminding him of Shockwave's many reprehensible crimes. He snorted. "It's a long story and I'm not going to tell it. Let's just say Shockwave is the pettiest mech I've ever met in my life—and I'm including myself on that list—and that my last couple of days were pretty bad for my ego, and leave it at that." 

Well, that could cover just about anything. "Does your ego have very many good days?" He said it wryly, but part of him genuinely wondered—and worried. 

Sure, Starscream was far from the best bot to ever peel himself out of the ground (or, no, come off the assembly line, hadn't he?) but he wasn't completely without virtues. He was brilliant, he was cunning—those were two different things—he had a wit as sharp and precise as a scalpel, and he was a machiavellian mastermind in a way that was a wonder to behold when it was turned toward more noble end goals, even if "noble" wasn't anywhere among Starscream's intentions. All of his virtues had a faint miasma of ill intent around them, sure—but they were there, and they were undeniable. Wheeljack wondered how many people actually bothered to acknowledge that. It didn't seem like nearly enough. 

Starscream replied to Wheeljack's question with an equally wry smile. "Well, I realize you were having a pretty bad day at the time and probably don't remember, but I _was_ elected supreme leader of Cybertron this one time. That day was pretty good for my ego." 

Wheeljack laughed. "Right! Of course." 

"And I made it to precinct senator once," Starscream said. “That wasn't a half bad day. Oh, and I was made second-in-command of an army. Perhaps you hadn't heard of that? I think you may have been on the other side." 

"Okay, okay, you've made your point." 

Wheeljack was just beginning to wonder whether Starscream had ever felt validated on any days _other_ than ones where he'd just been handed some massive promotion and an equally massive amount of power, when suddenly Starscream glanced away, his smirk slipping down to a smile that was a little smaller and a little more genuine, and said, "Chosen One Day wasn't bad either." 

Really? It ranked right up there with being declared supreme ruler of the planet? "Well—" 

"And your little speech." 

Wheeljack shrugged, suddenly self-conscious under the way Starscream was glancing sideways at him. "Oh. Well, uh." He shrugged again. "It—wasn't a bad holiday. So. Good going on that." He reset his vocalizer noisily. "Anyway, you still haven't answered my question." 

"Which question?" 

"About—about the real world. Living world. About how you know what's going on out there." 

"Oh, _that!_ " Starscream's optics lit up, and he leaned closer toward Wheeljack, grinning conspiratorially. It was a look that Wheeljack had only seen him make a couple of times before—even with a new faceplate and paint, it looked the same—and it always showed up immediately preceding Starscream asking Wheeljack to do something outrageous, dangerous, and miraculous. He was wary of the smile. 

But he always did what Starscream asked when he made it, so, what did it say about him? 

"Can you keep a secret?" 

Wheeljack hesitated. "... From?" 

"From—the others." Starscream gestured vaguely around. " _You_ know. _Them._ " 

"The other Autobots?" 

"Yes, them." 

"You're, uh, doing things that the Autobots wouldn't approve of," Wheeljack said, "and you think I—a whole Autobot—am gonna be okay with it?" 

Starscream scoffed. "You're sixty percent Autobot at _most._ " Wheeljack didn't have time to work out whether Starscream meant that as a compliment or an insult, much less which way he personally was going to take it, before Starscream went on, “Anyway, it's not that they wouldn't approve. They'd want _in_ on it. They'd want _Optimus_ in on it. And I'd rather he _not._ Call me selfish, but I'd rather keep this one little project to myself." 

"Why don't you want Optimus in on it?" 

"When you see, you'll know." 

"And I don't get to see until I've already promised not to tell, right?" 

Starscream smirked. 

Wheeljack sighed. "Well, with terms like that, how can I refuse?" He knew he'd regret it just a little bit more if he didn't go than if he did. 

"I knew you'd see it my way." Starscream slung an arm around Wheeljack's shoulders, and he tried not to focus on the weight of it, the warmth of him. For the first time, Wheeljack really realized just how cold this place, this strange demilitarized zone between life and death, really was. No—not cold, exactly. Devoid of warmth. Temperatureless, somehow. All except for Starscream.  

Wheeljack really wasn't doing a very good job of ignoring Starscream's arm. 

"Come on!" And now Starscream had his hand on Wheeljack's shoulder, squeezing, and it was going to be a miracle if he could think of anything else ever again. "Let's get going. You're going to absolutely love this." 

* * *

Prowl had found out, and Jetfire had confirmed, that Unicron was sucking energy from the cores of distant stars in order to power itself. Half of the machinery that allowed this feat had been located somewhere inside Unicron itself; the other half had been located in the black hole at its heart, deep inside infraspace. Which meant, somehow, the machinery could reach out from infraspace to the real world. And if it could, maybe it could be used to help someone _else_ in infraspace reach the real world. 

Well. No "maybe" about it. It _could._ And Starscream _had._ Not quite corporeally—he'd gone as not much more than a specter, and thus far had only managed to make contact with Bumblebee, Starscream suspected it was because he'd also spent a fair amount of time in infraspace—but he'd gone. It had only worked a couple of times, though, and then stopped; now Starscream needed Wheeljack's help to get it working for good. 

Wheeljack had spent too much of the past few hours feeling flabbergasted for this new revelation to blow him away. ("Hours"? Were hours still a thing here? Wheeljack wasn't sure how long he'd been here, but his fuel levels hadn't fluctuated, nor his energy levels. It felt like his body was in limbo, ever-unchanging.) So he immediately got to work examining the machinery. 

It was located inside a misshapen facility, lit by only a few large high windows and sparse lighting that Starscream thought must be powered by this “magic” thing they’d all heard so much about lately, because it sure wasn’t electricity. The interior, alien though it clearly was, looked like a cobbled-together mix between a boiler room and a factory floor. 

Much of the machinery had been very clearly—not shut down, because it didn't appear capable of being shut down, designed to run forever without end—but disabled, panels removed and wires expertly snipped, components and cogs neatly removed. Starscream took credit for that—"I think they were still sucking up stars—just slower—so I shut those parts of it down,"—and not for the first time, Wheeljack was struck by the way that, if Starscream didn't have anything immediately self-serving he needed to do, the next thing he defaulted to doing was almost always the _right_ thing. And again not for the first time, Wheeljack wondered what kind of an amazing person Starscream might have been if he wasn't so frantically trying to _convince_ everyone around him that he was amazing. He'd wasted his life on a con telling lies about himself that would have all been true if he hadn't instead wasted his life on the con. 

And sometimes Wheeljack ached to think of it. He'd ached whenever he watched Starscream put on that self-assured, self-deprecating smirk he wore when he wanted everyone to know he'd done something secret that they'd hate him for if they knew, and he'd ached when he'd watched Starscream stand before the whole world and politely confess to every crime he'd committed while wearing the crown, and he'd ached when he heard the previously-penitent Starscream had escaped in the wake of "Onyx Prime's" jarring arrival and was running riot with the Decepticons. 

And he ached now, hearing Starscream explain how he'd saved all the stars in all the galaxy from slowly suffocating, with a wirecutter here and a ratchet there—how he'd saved the entire galaxy, not for laudation, but simply because it needed to be done and Starscream was here and could do it. 

One mechanism controlled the flow of energy back and forth from real world Unicron to infraspace Unicron, and that was where they were focused now. It was a particularly tall, roughly cylindrical machine standing by itself in a circular room with a couple of high windows that didn’t so much bring in light as suggest that light was invited in if any happened to be in the vicinity and wanted to drop by. Instead, the room was brightly illuminated by a plethora of glowing orbs that liked to hover a few inches over whatever surface they’d been set on, and that Starscream advised Wheeljack not to touch with his bare hands. He’d scavenged them from New Prysmos. 

“It's really quite simple for anyone who knows a bit of rudimentary mechanical engineering," Starscream explained, one side of the machine peeled open so he could lean in with a flashlight and explain which Cybertronian parts were equivalent to these alien components. Every once in a while he would stammer over a name, call it a "doohickey" or "the fast zappy bit, you know," and Wheeljack would supply the real term, surprised and pleased that Starscream knew what they were for and how they worked, even if he didn't know all the right terms. "Just about any species that's invented faster-than-light travel could have made a thingy like this to instantaneously transfer energy across vast spaces—" 

"An energy ansible," Wheeljack said. 

"I thought 'ansible' was only for faster-than-light _communication_ devices?" 

"Sure, unless you put the word 'energy' in front of it. Then it communicates energy instead of messages." 

Starscream straightened up to give Wheeljack a skeptical look, then shrugged and leaned back into the energy ansible. "I mean, hell, Megatron's _gun_ has something like this in it; this isn't revolutionary tech. The only unusual thing about this thingy is that one half is in the real world and the other half is in infraspace. I still don't know how they accomplished _that._ " 

"It'd probably take, oh, a week or two to figure this thing out," Wheeljack said, trying to lean in around Starscream to examine the alien tech. "So I'll have it in a day." 

"I love it when you do that." 

Wheeljack's spark spun. " _What?_ " 

"What?" Starscream quickly straightened up and held the flashlight out to Wheeljack. "I should hope you can figure it out. That's why I hauled you back from the afterlife." 

Wheeljack's spark was still a few RPM too high—he could feel it like static humming through his wires—but he took the flashlight and tried to act as much like nothing happened as Starscream clearly thought there had. "No surprises there," he mumbled, trying and failing to focus on the wires in front of him. And then he registered what Starscream said. "Wait, back from the _afterlife?_ " 

"Yes?" 

"Not infraspace? The—the _afterlife_ afterlife? Like, as in the Afterspark?" 

"Yes?" 

"Not—I wasn't here?" 

"No? You don't remember me hauling you back?" 

Wheeljack tried to think. Between Elonia and waking up with Starscream over him, it was all a murky black smear and an indistinct white light. "No. Why didn't I wake up _here?_ You said anyone who'd interacted with the Talisman ended up here, right?" 

"Interacted _directly_ with it, while they were _dying._ " 

Wheeljack was staring at Starscream now. " _You_ pulled me back from the _afterlife?_ " 

"Ah..." Starscream averted his gaze, staring at the same bunch of wires Wheeljack had unsuccessfully tried to focus on a moment ago. "Well, I needed the help of an actual proper engineer, but—obviously—needed a dead one, and _you_ were dead but still only on the threshold of the Afterspark instead of actually _in_ it, so..." They sounded like excuses instead of explanations. They sounded like that thing Starscream did where he justified his altruism by pointedly providing selfish motives. 

"How did you get to the afterlife and back?" 

"See that?" Starscream leaned back into the energy ansible and pointed up. 

Wheeljack aimed the flashlight at a translucent, glasslike cylinder, with a plus and a minus recently scrawled onto each end of it. "Uh-huh?" 

"I reversed the polarity." 

"That's it?!" 

"Yep." 

Wheeljack grabbed the energy ansible's casing and laughed so hard he couldn't stand up straight. 

* * *

"You can see why I don't want the other Autobots to find out about this, right?" 

Wheeljack thought he could see, but stayed quiet for a moment. He wanted to hear Starscream's explanation. 

If you walked through infraspace long enough, you found that it curled upward, like a bowl. Keep walking, and you found yourself back where you started. The surface of infraspace was like the inside of a bubble, and the sky hung heavy and black in the middle. The engine that sucked life from the stars was a building-sized tumor of misshapen components embedded in the bubble, with a warped umbilical cord that stretched up from its roof into the sky. From their vantage point, sitting on top of the roof, they could see the cords of another four or five sites of Unicron parts stretching into the black. 

Far away and left of New Prysmos, so far that the sky's cloudy darkness almost obscured it, was a tiny facility that would have been unnoticeable from this distance if not for the severed umbilical cord that lay in a loose coil around it. Starscream stared at it as he spoke. 

"Right now, Optimus is content with his undead retirement," Starscream said. "But he's got an ugly little tendency to come back from retirement the instant people start to say his name with nostalgia instead of scorn. Whenever he does, he takes charge, does something crazy, makes things a million times worse, and then gets people pontificating and debating about the moral ramifications instead of _stopping_ him like they know they _should._ " 

"I think you're a little biased," Wheeljack said, uncomfortably—uncomfortable because he could say that Starscream was _biased_ but wasn't sure he could say he was _wrong._

"Am I? What do you think about his little conquest of Earth?" 

"Well—I mean—" He stammered for a moment, trying to put a couple years' worth of hopelessly tangled opinions in order. "It's—it's a complicated—it brings Earth into the international community, which can only be good for it, especially since they're already dealing with other alien threats like the Dire Wraiths—" 

"You're pontificating," Starscream said, "on the moral ramifications.” 

Which he was, and knew he was. He fell silent. 

"And you didn't deny that it was a _conquest._ " 

Wheeljack could have argued that he'd thought the exact terminology being used was less important than the question being asked, but that would be dodging the truth and they both knew it. "I didn't," he said, defeated. "It _was_ a conquest." 

"And usually you Autobots are all about overthrowing conquerors, aren't you? But what did you—you, Wheeljack, what did you do when the conqueror was Optimus? What did _all_ of you do, you collective Autobots and Prime-worshipers? It's wrong, it's unacceptable, it's worth fighting a war over—until _he_ does it, huh?" 

Wheeljack grumbled, but he supposed he couldn't really argue with that. Every time he thought about Cybertron taking over Earth, something inside him twisted and squirmed with guilt. And when a defeated voice in his head said _there's nothing I could have done,_ an angry voice answered _that doesn't mean you had to collaborate._   

He'd collaborated with Starscream, too. What was the difference? 

Starscream stood, balancing on the edge of the roof, his pedes half hanging over the edge—was that a flier thing? Brainstorm did that too, and it made Wheeljack just as nervous—and planted his hands on his hips. "Smarter defectors than me have said that the day the Decepticons went off the rails was the day that the Cause became conflated with Megatron himself. Maybe the Autobots should've taken that as a cautionary tale." 

All right, comparisons to Megatron were too far. Wheeljack elbowed Starscream's shin. "You were saying about not telling anybody about this." 

Starscream kicked Wheeljack's thigh. "If the Autobots here know that there's a way out of infraspace, the next time there's an emergency, the first thing they're gonna do is bust down the door to Optimus's love shack and tell him he needs to go save the universe again. And then he's running wild again, with even _fewer_ checks on him because now everyone loves him for martyring himself for the umpteenth time to stop Unicron.” 

"Do they?" Wheeljack asked. "All love him, I mean? You've been out there." 

"Of course they do. Nobody says anything bad about the guy who died saving the galaxy." 

"What about you?" 

It was the wrong question to ask. Starscream winced and mumbled, "Not saying anything counts as not saying anything bad, I guess." For Starscream, Wheeljack expected, even the worst sort of infamy would have been better than being forgotten. 

Dryly, Wheeljack said, "Comes with membership in the unsung heroes club, right?" 

Starscream laughed bitterly. "Anyway. You get it, right? Why I don't want them to know?" 

Wheeljack considered what it would be like for Optimus to come back to life again.  Sure, he'd deal with the crisis of the day—he always did—but the decisions he made when the crisis was over, when they were at peace, when everyone (hell, including Wheeljack himself) did everything he asked no matter what they thought or how they felt about it... Cybertron didn't need any more de facto dictators, even benevolent ones; and no matter what Optimus or anyone else intended, that would be what he'd become if he went back. And he _would_ go back, if for a second he thought he was needed and knew it was possible. And if he didn't think he was needed, the others—Kup, Blurr—might persuade him otherwise. "You're right. I won't tell." 

Starscream smiled down at Wheeljack, and the fact that he was smiling made Wheeljack immediately second-guess his decision, even as his spark spun a little faster again. "I knew I could trust you." 

And he said it like he meant it. 

* * *

"I don't know _how_ you managed to get this working the first time. All by yourself?" 

"What, do you think I had help? Me? From who?" 

Wheeljack was examining some components high on the side of the energy ansible, the part designed to actually store energy. "This thing is designed to only work one way. It takes energy in; it doesn't push it back out. But you were able to get it to go the other way?" 

Wheeljack was balanced on top of a stack of tables—they couldn't find a ladder—and leaning inside the energy ansible. From here, he couldn't see Starscream, but he could hear him pacing around at the base of the machine. "Yeah. Can't _you_ make it go the other way?" 

"Well, yes—" 

"Then great. No problem." 

"But how did _you_ do it?" 

Starscream was silent a moment, just long enough that Wheeljack knew he had to be deciding whether to tell the truth or make up an answer. "Decepticon secret." Okay, that sounded like the truth. 

"And do I get to learn the...?" 

"Oh, not a chance. It's not going to work again, anyway. It's all on you now." 

"It might help me figure it out faster if you—" 

"Nope." 

"You're sure?" 

"I'm sure." 

Wheeljack decided he could believe Starscream on that. "Anyway, it shouldn't be that difficult to make a new way to reverse the flow. It'll be hard, but pretty easy." 

He heard Starscream stop pacing. "You wanna try that again?" 

"Uh... Labor-intensive, but simple." 

"Oh! Sure." The tables shifted slightly under Wheeljack's pedes as Starscream climbed up them. "So, already figured out what we need to do?" 

"'We'? You're actually helping, not just supervising?" 

"Sure! If there's room for me to. I'm not going to get in your way." Starscream's voice got steadily closer, until he was standing on the same table as Wheeljack, one forearm resting on the open casing of the energy ansible and the other resting on Wheeljack's shoulder. He was, Wheeljack noted, a lot more touchy-feely in death than he'd been in life. He wondered if it was because of the new body. Or maybe—Wheeljack had to wonder, darkly—maybe it was because nobody could hurt the dead. 

In any case, he wasn't complaining. Touching was—nice, touching was fine. (He felt a little less oppressively _neutral_ and a little more alive, where Starscream touched him.) He was just curious. 

"But if I _can_ help..." 

"Definitely," Wheeljack said. "What kind of engineering experience do you have?" 

"Maintenance skills. And soldering, welding, so on. I liked to get hands-on with our super weapons." 

Wheeljack brightened. "Yeah? Me too." Of course, Wheeljack mainly got hands-on with the ones he'd designed himself, but it was still nice to hear. "How are you with chemistry?" 

"Eh." He wiggled his hand in a so-so gesture. "I can make bombs out of bird crap." 

Wheeljack was dying to ask when that had ever been relevant to Starscream's life. "Think you can identify some piezoelectric ignition sources in the wreck of New Prysmos?" 

"Tell you what: I'll bring you anything I can find that sets fires, and you tell me if it's piezoelectric or..." 

Wheeljack hadn't noticed that his own arm had been snaking around Starscream's back until the instant his fingertips brushed Starscream's waist and Starscream fell silent. It had felt like the right thing to do—why had it felt right?—because Starscream's arm was on Wheeljack, and—balance, and— But now Starscream was silent, his optics wide in shock, his wings raised, every piston and pulley in his body frozen. 

"Sorry." Wheeljack pulled his hand back. 

And the second he did, Starscream darted away from him. "Piezoelectric!" (For a moment, Wheeljack couldn't recall what Starscream was talking about.) "New Prysmos! Got it!" His voice was a shade shriller than usual, and definitely louder. He climbed down the tower of tables so fast that Wheeljack had to grab onto the open casing of the energy ansible for balance. (What happened, he wondered, if you got injured in infraspace?) 

Right—right! Piezoelectric! "Hey!" Wheeljack leaned around the energy ansible. "If you don't find anything in a couple of hours, come back here. I'll probably have a list of other things for you to forage for by then." 

Starscream stopped, perched on a windowsill high above the ground—Wheeljack supposed that was an easier exit for a flier than the door, huh—and turned back to look at Wheeljack. He had a wild, frightened, frantically happy look on his face. his smile shaky and wide and crooked. 

"Chronometers don't work right in here," Starscream said, "but I'll guesstimate it the best I can." With that, he rolled backwards out of the window. Wheeljack heard him transform, and out the window he could see Starscream do barrel roll while heading toward New Prysmos. Like a five-day-old MTO, showing off that he was finally steady on his new wings. 

Wheeljack watched until he was long gone. Then forced his attention back into the guts of the energy ansible. 

His fingertips blazed where they'd touched Starscream's waist. 

* * *

Wheeljack was wondering, for the dozenth time, just _how_ Starscream had gotten this thing to work the first time, when he heard the sound of an approaching jet through the window. He stopped his work, wiped off on some kind of weird sleeveless robe he'd found in a closet and been using to clean grease off his hands, and carefully climbed down the tables just in time for Starscream to transform and land. "How goes the hunt?" 

"You tell me." Starscream popped open his cockpit, and a pile of miscellaneous objects tumbled into his hands. "Everything I could find that starts fires, just like I promised." 

Wheeljack peered over the objects. "Is—that a piece of charcoal?" 

Starscream held his hands out so Wheeljack could better inspect it. "Looks like it." 

"I said _piezoelectric_." 

"Yes. You did. I'm not actually entirely sure what that means." 

Wheeljack gave Starscream an exasperated look. Starscream shrugged. "The molecules flex when you electrify the object or something, right? I didn't exactly come in here with a taser and a microscope. Anything else look good?" 

"Wel—" Wheeljack stopped. And stared at Starscream. "... Weren't you _blue_?" 

"Oh!" Starscream was definitely not blue now. He was, in fact, quite red. "Yeah, thought I'd, uh—what do you think?" He smiled winningly. 

What did he think? What did it matter what he— "What happened to blue? I thought that was your—you said it was your final form or something?" 

"My true body," Starscream corrected. "And— _yes_ , but—the paint job doesn't make a big difference, does it? It's still the same body. What do you think? An improvement?" 

"Uh..." Wheeljack shrugged, baffled. "I don't—I don't know. I was still getting used to the blue." Starscream's smile faltered. "Where did you even— Who brought _red paint_ in here? When did you have _time_ to repaint? How long were you gone?" It didn't feel like that long. A proper repaint took, what, probably half a day? If you didn't want to get sloppy, and Starscream's was _definitely_ not sloppy. It hadn't been half a day. Had it? Wheeljack hadn't been working half a day. Had he? 

"Not however long you thought I was." Starscream dumped his findings on the table. "Anyway, does any of this work." 

He'd brought back some flint, a couple of damaged lanterns that appeared to turn on by magic—a wonder that they still worked—a wood torch, and several small canisters of different types of fuel, including—"Where did you get this?" "Blurr had it with him, talked him out of it,"—a single, solitary can of engex. None of it what Wheeljack needed, but not bad to have around. Especially that can of engex. 

"We'll split it," Starscream said, "when we finish upgrading this thing." 

"We _should_ give it back to Blurr," Wheeljack said. 

Starscream shrugged. "Hey, if _you_ don't want the only can of engex in infraspace, it's no paint off my back." 

"I'll look for a piezoelectric ignition source," Wheeljack said. "And, in return, you get a scavenger hunt." 

"Ooh, fun." 

Wheeljack held out a datapad with a list of materials he needed to convert the energy ansible from one way to two. "And this time? _Tell_ me if there's anything you don't recognize on the list before you go searching." 

Starscream skimmed the list and flashed another smile. "I don't see the word 'piezoelectric,' I think we're good." He claimed the datapad and stowed it in his cockpit. "Are you gonna be in New Prysmos?" 

"Probably. I might visit some of the other places with the, uh—" Wheeljack made an up-and-down gesture with one finger, pantomiming the strange tangle of cables stretching up into the sky. 

"Oh, yeah. The vacuum hoses." 

"What?" 

"Kup's term for them. Just don't go to the one with a cut hose; I don't think Optimus and his new alien squeeze are taking visitors." 

Wheeljack picked up and stowed the can of engex. "Are they _actually_...?" 

"Hell, I don't know." Starscream was apparently content to use the door like a normal mech this time; he walked out with Wheeljack. "So. The vacuum hose station that's—we've been using New Prysmos as north—the one that's east by southeast of New Prysmos—" 

"Hold on. If New Prysmos is the north pole, then isn't everything else south of it?" 

"No, like— Okay, if you were flying straight toward the center of New Prysmos, from wherever you are, that direction becomes north." 

"Okay." 

"So if you were to turn—well, I guess _you_ could just drive in reverse—that becomes south. And east and west are perpendicular to the north-south line, through the center of New Prysmos." 

"Yeah. Okay. Got it." 

"So. The one east by southeast of New Prysmos—that's the Autobot base." 

"Oh, we've got a base?" 

"There's an Autobrand on the door and they glare when I come over, so if it's not an Autobot base, it's doing a good impression of one." 

They probably weren't glaring because of Starscream's former faction so much as because of who Starscream was as a person, but Wheeljack wasn't about to mention that. "Blurr's there?" 

"Either that, or out seeing how fast he can circumnavigate infraspace. I try not to keep up with his latest records; it reminds me of how small our bubble is." 

"Then I'll see you later." 

* * *

Blurr hugged Wheeljack. 

Kup hugged Wheeljack. 

Even Quickswitch hugged Wheeljack, which was just a tad awkward, since Wheeljack didn't really think they were close enough for that. 

Still, he'd hugged everyone back—with extra squeezes for those who'd been dead before him.  

"Didn't think we'd see you here!" Blurr was grinning from audial fin to audial fin, probably in part because Wheeljack was here and in part because Wheeljack had said that, as great as it was to see everyone, he'd mainly come to visit Blurr. He was quick to lead Wheeljack over to his section of the "Autobot base"—which was a half-built home inside a dark, decrepit silo. The weld lines were still visible on the walls where whatever equipment the silo originally held had been ripped off by the Autobots. Blurr's area was haloed with what had to have been half the lights in New Prysmos. "Starscream thought you might've got enough of a dose of the Talisman to end up here instead of dead. Kind of surprised he was right—not upset, though! For once. It's good to see you alive again. Ish." 

So Starscream had lied. Surprise. Or Starscream had told the truth about what he believed, realized he was wrong, and went out to rectify his error? 

"It's good to _be_ alive again. Ish." And good to be around someone other than Starscream. Not that being around Starscream was _bad_ , per se—and it really _wasn't_ bad, he'd found over time, especially since the longer you were around him, the closer he got to shedding his masks and layers and acting like himself. But Wheeljack also found that, if he was around Starscream for too long, if he let himself synchronize too neatly with the way Starscream thought, the way Starscream spoke, sometimes he nearly forgot that there were other people out there. And that probably wasn't a good thing. Was it? 

Blurr gestured for Wheeljack to take a seat on a crate, and sat on one across from him. "What took you so long to get here?" he asked. "You didn't get lost, did you?" He grinned. "New Prysmos isn't _that_ big." 

Wheeljack laughed. "No, no way." What else did he say about where he'd been? Telling Blurr he'd been dead-dead meant telling Blurr how he'd got un-dead, which meant explaining what Starscream was up to, and he'd promised he wouldn't. He'd agreed he _shouldn't_ , even. But there was a difference between keeping it a secret and telling a lie about it. He'd never promised that. So what did he say? Blurr was looking at him expectantly. 

"No, I was—I don't know where. Somewhere dark. Just... floating." Which wasn't dishonest. If he left it at that— "Maybe since I wasn't directly connected to the Talisman energy when I died, it took longer for it to tug me here." 

Blurr shrugged. "Huh. Maybe. Who knows how that thing works." 

There. He'd done it. And Starscream's secret was safe. Wheeljack waited for the guilt to come over him—the guilt like when he'd meekly followed along with Starscream's more dubious orders, the guilt when he'd said nothing in the face of Optimus's conquest—but it never came. What, was his guilt chip broken? 

Or maybe he hadn't done the wrong thing. 

"Oh—I came by to return this." Wheeljack took out the can of engex. "Don't know how Starscream got it off of you." 

Blurr waved off the can. "Keep it. It's the only can of engex in infraspace. As long as I've got it, I'll be worrying about finding an opportunity to celebrate big enough to justify drinking it." 

As Wheeljack stowed it away again, Blurr asked, "How'd _you_ get it off _Starscream_?" 

"Uh—" How did he answer that without admitting what he and Starscream were up to? "He—just gave it to me." Oh, stupid. 

But Blurr laughed. "For you? I'm not surprised." And he gave Wheeljack a knowing look. Wheeljack wondered what it was he knew. 

"You probably said something nice about his new paint." 

Wheeljack looked up at Kup, who was now on top of a loft that had clearly been constructed recently, and— "Why are you standing on your head?" 

"I'm meditatin'," Kup grunted. "Passes the time. It was a big help in the Dead Universe. Far as I can tell, only difference between there and here is the good company." 

Wheeljack snorted. "You're flattering us," Blurr said. 

Something about Kup's comment about Starscream's paint had sounded a little too wink-wink-nudge-nudge for Wheeljack's tastes, so instead of letting it lie, he replied, "Actually, I _think_ what I said to him was that I'd only just been getting used to the blue. Where did he find red paint in here, anyway? I mean—I'm sure New Prysmos has paint _somewhere_ , but not any that would look good on _Cybertronians_..." 

"I'm sure he didn't use paint." Kup rolled down onto his back until he was sitting up, with only a couple of clanks and clunks—pretty graceful, for his age—and scooted around to face Wheeljack and Blurr again. "Probably did the same thing he did to get that new body of his—think it up into existence." 

"What? Wait." Wheeljack looked between Kup and Blurr, optics wide. "You're saying _he_ made that new body of his? I thought it— He called it his true form or something. I thought he... got it automatically when he died, or something." 

They both shook their heads. Blurr said, "No, he showed up dead the same way he looked when he was alive, like the rest of us." 

Kup said, "It took him—I don't know, time's funny here—maybe a week to work out how. He got the optics first, then started switching himself out piece by piece." 

"So Starscream can shapeshift now." Wheeljack took a few seconds to absorb that. "Yeah. Okay. Sure, why not? Can we _all_ do that?" 

"Probably," Blurr said. "No one other than him has figured out how yet, though." 

"Why do you think I'm over here meditating?" Kup stretched, and Wheeljack winced at all the pops, squeaks, and scrapes that emanated from his hips, back, and shoulders. "I'd sure like to shapeshift into something younger." 

Wheeljack said, "Starscream always _is_ pretty fast at figuring new things out." 

"Yeah." Blurr's face screwed up in annoyance. As though Starscream's brilliance, his ability to think five steps ahead, his ability to combine ideas and schemes and politics and people—to make bombs out of bird crap—was one of his biggest flaws, rather than one of his saving graces. 

And Wheeljack was reminded, jarringly, that when he was among Autobots, he was among people who didn't think Starscream _had_ saving graces. Any virtues, any assets that Starscream had, to them, were just more things that made him dangerous to them. 

It was like an invisible wall had come up between Wheeljack and the others. He didn't see Starscream like that anymore. How _did_ he see Starscream? 

He pressed the tips of the fingers that had brushed Starscream's waist into his palm. 

* * *

Wheeljack found several sculptures and support structures in New Prysmos that he was pretty sure were made with piezoelectric crystals, but he didn't have the materials to easily turn them into ignition sources. He made note of them, in case he had to resort to them later, and kept searching. 

Starscream was buzzing around the New Prysmos ruins, collecting his own list of materials. Wheeljack saw him from time to time in the sky, hovering in bot mode as he scanned the city for his next target, or flying back toward their worksite with a bundle of wires wrapped around his nosecone. 

Just as Wheeljack was getting tired of breaking into far-too-small homes and guessing at where aliens might keep objects to start fires, he saw Starscream heading out toward the worksite again. Might as well take a break and see what kind of success Starscream had. 

Wheeljack transformed and headed toward the site as well. 

* * *

"You know, when one person has a twenty item scavenger hunt, and the other person has a _one_ item scavenger hunt, usually you don't expect the guy with twenty items to pull in the lead." 

"Oh, shut up. I gave you the easier list." Wheeljack was crouched on the floor, looking over Starscream's finds, which were piled up in a clear space: cords and cables and wires and struts and crystals and glass and tools and on and on. Wheeljack held up a tool that looked like some unholy cross between a wrench and a pair of pliers. "... Huh." 

"Yeah, I know. I've been raiding the other Unicron sites for supplies. I'm guessing these are tools used on... which colony was he originally? Elonia, Arduria—no, Ant-something. Antonia? Why do all our colonies sound the same?" 

"Unicron was a _colony?_ As in—as in one of _our_ colonies?" 

"Oh, right, you weren't around for that. Surprise: we're our own worst enemy, again." Starscream crouched down around the pile of supplies, near Wheeljack—but, he noted, out of his arm's reach. 

"You know, just once, I wish somebody else was our enemy." Wheeljack started reorganizing the scavenged supplies, arranging them so it'd be easier for him to quickly grab what he needed while he was working. "Just some whacko pack of invaders that we've never heard of and that’ve never heard of us, but that’ve decided they want a piece of our planet. I'm tired of every one of our enemies being 'each other,' 'the natural consequences of our terrible history,' or 'Shockwave again.'" 

"If it helps, right now our enemy is the cold, uncaring concept of death itself." 

"... Kinda does help. Thanks." Wheeljack sat back, looking over the rearranged supplies. "Do you believe in the Necrobot?" 

Starscream scoffed. "As a supernatural entity? No. But I believe there's probably some weirdo out there that likes counting corpses. Do you?" 

"Nah. Mythology." 

Starscream appeared to consider that for a moment, then stood up. "I'm trading lists with you." 

"What?" 

"As reluctant as I am to admit to any of my very few flaws, I confess that I got the easy stuff first. The rest, I'd only trust a genius engineer to get right." Starscream half smiled. "Besides, we've both had a stab at the piezoelectric thingy now; it's my turn again." 

"You sure? You don't have to." Didn't Starscream still not know exactly what a piezoelectric ignition source was? 

"Sure. I found another place to search. It’s promising." 

"In _this_ little bubble?" 

"I'm a miracle worker." 

A miracle worker who was hiding something. But how much trouble could Starscream get into here, anyway? What was the worst he could do, kill someone? "All right, switch." 

Starscream handed the datapad back to Wheeljack. Wheeljack was careful not to touch his hand. The items he'd already found were checked off. Yeah, he _had_ found the easy things first. "Good luck." 

"Thanks." 

* * *

Wheeljack didn't see plating nor paintchip of Starscream for... for a good while. (He missed time. He missed the need to refuel and the way it ordered the passage of events into cycles instead of a single interminable line.) He collected most of the materials he needed, hauling them one at a time back to their worksite; and as often as he looked to the sky, or along the far-off curves of infraspace's bubble, he didn't see Starscream flying around. 

But on his third trip back, there Starscream was, leaning against the energy ansible with arms crossed and one foot crossed over the other, grinning triumphantly. 

Wheeljack stopped in the door, two chemical-filled jars and a bundle of foil in his arms. "You found it?" 

"I give you," Starscream said, "one piezoelectric ignition source." 

He held up... Wheeljack couldn't even see it. He walked closer and squinted at Starscream's hand. It was an extremely tiny plastic brick, on the tip of one finger. "That's it?" 

"It's called a _lighter._ " Starscream said the word in human—Wheeljack wasn't sure what language just from one word, they all sounded so alike, but you could always tell when someone was speaking in human. "You push a little button, here," he tried to point with his other hand, which was basically useless, "and it squeezes _something_ inside the lighter to make a spark and start a fire." 

"It's tiny. I was hoping for something a little bigger than that." 

"I got more." Starscream held his hand under his cockpit, opened it a crack, and hundreds of lighters spilled out. 

Wheeljack dropped the foil bundle to the ground so he could hold one hand under Starscream's, catching any lighters that slid off. "Primus, Starscream, where'd you find all of these?" 

"You know the humans that were trying to destroy Cybertron but dropped New Prysmos on us instead? I found some of their supplies on the edge of the city a while ago. I thought they might be useful, so I stowed them somewhere secret." 

"And they brought _this many_ lighters?" 

"Probably to set off explosives. Or ignite those paper rolls that they like to stick in their mouths. Did you notice if any of our invaders used them?" 

"No idea." 

"Me neither." 

Wheeljack carefully knelt so he could set down the jars of chemicals, and cupped both hands over the lighters. "They're so _tiny._ " 

"I'm sure we can find tweezers." 

"You're sure they're piezoelectric? I'd have to take one apart before I was sure." 

"Of course I'm sure," Starscream said. "I looked it up." 

"Where?" 

Starscream didn't say anything. Wheeljack glanced up at him. Starscream was looking back with a curiously blank expression that Wheeljack suspected was concealing blind panic. 

It hit Wheeljack that nothing Starscream had told him about where he'd found the lighters was true. Wheeljack had just asked him for a part of the story he hadn't prepared yet. 

He stood, looked at Starscream, and asked—no anger, no accusation, but very seriously—"Where did you get these lighters?" 

Starscream looked back at him, and said, just as seriously, "In the supplies the humans left in New Prysmos." 

And there they stood. Staring at each other. Hands full of hundreds of lighters. 

Starscream looked away first, to very carefully drop his lighters in a pile on the bottom table of their table stack. "Let's split the rest of your list," he said. "It'll get done faster." 

Wheeljack didn't say anything. 

Starscream finally looked back at him. "Your list?" 

"Starscream..." 

"What." It was a _what_ that didn't invite questions. 

"Where did you get—" 

"Does it matter?" 

"Yes," Wheeljack snapped. He dumped his lighters on top of Starscream's, and for a moment was too uncomfortably close to him. "Yes, it _does_ matter, because it means you're—you're not just _hiding_ things from me—you're _lying_ to me! When I'm trying to help you!" 

"Oh, wow. Starscream's lying." He shrugged, hands swung wide. "Are you surprised?" 

"No!" Wheeljack was surprised at how Starscream flinched back at the word. "No, I'm not! But I am disappointed!" Starscream scoffed; it wasn't convincing. "Disappointed and, and—and furious! And _why?_ What, does it _matter_ where you got the lighters? Did you, I don't know, have to murder a tribe of infraspace-dwelling aliens to get them?" 

"Of course not," Starscream said defensively. 

"There's no 'of course' _anything_ with you! I can't take _anything_ for granted!" Starscream flinched again. " _Starscream_ —Starscream, I'm _helping_ you. I'm _on your side._ Why don't you treat me like an ally?" 

Starscream glowered down at the pile of lighters, jaw set in an angry pout. Wheeljack waited anyway. Finally, Starscream said, "This _is_ how I treat my allies." 

And that was so true, and so depressing, that it immediately drained the anger out of Wheeljack. "I guess so." He looked down at the mysterious lighters, and idly scooped them together into a pile. 

"So," Starscream said, tone cold and reserved. "Splitting the list." 

"Why should I keep doing this?" Wheeljack asked. "If you're just going to lie all the way through it." 

"Because if you don't have a project to work on, then you've got nothing to do with yourself other than hang out with the other Autobots, and the best project _they_ can offer you is an opportunity to play interior decorator." Glib and snappy. They were back on questions that Starscream had prepared answers to. Starscream had expected that Wheeljack would want out—and that was even _more_ depressing. "You'd rather be here. You _want_ to be here, stretching the boundaries of science, digging around in Unicron's guts, turning alien machinery inside-out, punching a hole between limbo and life—even if it's with me." 

"It doesn't have to be 'even if,'" Wheeljack said. "It could be 'plus.'" 

Starscream flinched again, like that was another jab at him. 

Wheeljack hadn't meant it as one. "Starscream..." 

"Just give me the list," Starscream said. "And we'll get it done and you won't have to deal with me anymore. All right?" 

_Not wanting to deal with Starscream anymore_ wasn't anywhere on the list of feelings motivating Wheeljack right then. _Not wanting to deal with Starscream like THIS_ , sure. But he didn't know how to elucidate the difference. He wasn't entirely, completely sure how he _did_ want to deal with Starscream. Not in any way he was ready to put into words. 

So he reluctantly held out the datapad. Starscream snatched it up, scrawled a star next to a couple of the items, and handed it back. "The other two are yours." And he breezed past Wheeljack, so quickly and so close that Wheeljack felt a chill where Starscream's wings stirred the still air. He was out the door before Wheeljack could say another word. 

Wheeljack looked down at his list of remaining objects, and sighed. 

* * *

There were a couple of turbines in the energy ansible, but Wheeljack needed to install another couple for his modifications to work. He'd put them off to near the bottom of his list, but fortunately, he had a very good idea where he could find more. 

This was the only energy ansible Starscream had mentioned, but Wheeljack had been staring at its guts long enough to figure out that it wasn't pulling enough energy from the stars to keep Unicron moving. It just wasn't efficient enough. Energy ansibles rarely were. Even if Unicron had alternate sources of fuel, he'd need at least a couple of energy ansibles to keep him going. 

Wheeljack started driving, cutting between New Prysmos and the tiny facility with the cut vacuum hose. And as he drove, a structure slowly appeared underneath the heavy black sky: a building that looked just like the one where he and Starscream were working. A second energy ansible, on the exact opposite side of infraspace from the one where Wheeljack and Starscream had been working. 

There were his turbines. And, ideally, some answers about Starscream. 

Wheeljack had no doubt that Starscream was telling the truth about having done _something_ to the energy ansible that let him escape a few times before failing. If he hadn't done it once already, he wouldn't have been so sure that it was possible that he’d willingly spent what was probably his last trip hauling Wheeljack out of the afterlife to accomplish it; and if it hadn't broken down, he wouldn't have needed to haul Wheeljack out at all. 

But by now, he also had no doubt that the energy ansible he'd looked over had never been modified by Cybertronian hands. The one Starscream had modified must have been somewhere else. 

Wheeljack had been content to let Starscream keep his secrets as long as they had been only that—secrets. But now that they were lies, too, perhaps he'd better find out just what the hell Starscream was up to. 

The building for the second energy ansible was laid out much the same as the first. Starscream had even taken the time to disable the same mechanisms. The windows were shuttered and only a few emergency lights worked, but beyond that, the only difference between this site and the other one— 

—was Shockwave. 

Wheeljack stopped dead. Shockwave was like a data ghost in a bad dream, surreal and translucent and multitudinous. Three versions of him lay over the same space, fading brighter and dimmer as Wheeljack stared: the senator, as resplendent as he had been in his heyday in turquoise and rose gold; the centaur Prime with the cruel gaze; and the shabby, worn-out purple scientist with the lost face and hand. Wheeljack couldn't move as all three forms turned to face him at once, their gazes overlapped. 

Some distant part of Wheeljack was relieved to note that despite his appearance, at least Shockwave still had only one voice—dusty, droning, haughty, and supremely disinterested: "You aren't dead. Fascinating." 

"You aren't solid," Wheeljack retorted. Shockwave glanced down at himself, as if to check Wheeljack's claim. 

"Ah, yes. I've been having trouble consolidating my identity. Forgive me." Shockwave looked up again. "I'm not as good at this as Starscream. He always has been bafflingly quick on the uptake." 

Wheeljack had been looking around for something to chuck at Shockwave's face—that was, Starscream had said, the locally accepted way to get him to go away—but at Starscream's name, he stopped. "You've been talking to Starscream?" For a moment, it all made sense: Starscream's insistence that Wheeljack not tell the Autobots anything, _especially_ Optimus; the fact that he'd never mentioned the second energy ansible, the one which Shockwave was apparently haunting; the fact that Starscream had declared in no uncertain terms that he wasn't getting information from Shockwave but was reluctant to explain why— "You're working with Starscream!" 

Shockwave made a noise so emphatically disgusted that it not only dispelled Wheeljack's theory completely, but also packed more emotion into a single sound than Wheeljack had heard out of Shockwave for the entire length of the war. "I would not work with _him_ if the fate of the universe was at stake." 

Sarcastically, Wheeljack snapped, " _Saving_ it or _destroying_ it?" 

Shockwave tilted his head—heads—and gave the question serious consideration. "Either," he said thoughtfully. "Regardless, I am here to visit Orion." 

Wheeljack was already mentally reproaching himself for assuming the worst of Starscream. What happened to being one of the only mechs to recognize his virtues? What made Wheeljack any kinder to Starscream than Blurr or Kup if he jumped on the first opportunity to think the worst of Starscream? 

"Has he been claiming to be working with me?" Shockwave asked. 

"No," Wheeljack said. "The opposite, actually." 

Shockwave nodded slowly. "And so you doubted him. Intelligent." 

Yeah. Pfeh. 

He went on: "But no. If you're looking for one of Starscream's accomplices in the real world, you should be looking to Bumblebee, not me. I'm given to understand he's been visiting him regularly." 

That, actually, rang true. Bumblebee had mentioned, in passing, having been able to speak to Starscream from Crystal City; it’d make sense if Starscream sought him out... 

But hold on. "'Regularly'? What do you mean, regularly? How regularly?" 

"I'm in prison," Shockwave said. "How would I know?" 

He knew a lot for someone who wasn't supposed to know anything. "But—not lately, right? Not since whatever he used to get the energy ansible to transport him broke down?" 

"You're calling it an 'energy ansible'? Really?" 

"Just—answer the question!" 

Shockwave gave Wheeljack a long, considering look. "Did _he_ tell you he's been using it to transport himself?" 

Wheeljack felt his fuel tank drop. "What—what _has_ he been using?" 

"Nothing," Shockwave said. "He simply flies through the Unicron black hole and out. He has the thus far entirely unique talent of being able to effortlessly drag his spark into and out of infraspace and black holes—no need for equipment, assistance, or the tedious practice I put in to learn a shallow facsimile of his ability. I almost wonder if it isn't a previously latent outlier ability that never had an opportunity to express itself." 

Wheeljack stared at Shockwave, stunned silent. Shockwave took the opportunity to give Wheeljack a pointed once over. "And now he can even will his spark to the afterlife and back? Oh, that _is_ fascinating." 

* * *

Wheeljack slammed open the door so hard that Starscream jumped. Good, he was here. (He was blue again.) 

"You can leave." 

Starscream looked startled at the declaration; then resigned. "Oh. I thought—you might need help putting everything together, but—" 

"No!" Wheeljack pointed out the window, toward the sky. "You can leave infraspace! All this time, you could leave!" 

"Whaaat?" Starscream said, completely unconvincingly. "Why would you think—?" 

"Shockwave." 

"Oh, scrap." 

"All this—" Wheeljack gestured at the energy ansible, "it isn't to get you out of infraspace. It never was. So what _is_ it for?" 

Starscream scowled. 

" _Starscream._ " 

He kept scowling. He didn't say anything. 

"Dammit, Starscream, just—" Wheeljack swept a hand at all the supplies they'd collected. "You've had me working on this for I-don't-know-how-long—" 

"Three weeks." 

"—you could at least tell m— Three _weeks?!_ " He'd thought it was a couple of days. "You can tell time, too?!" 

"No." Starscream's arms were crossed tight, and he was glowering down at his feet. "But I can check when I go out." 

"Ah!" He was admitting that he could do it. Progress. "So why? What do you need the energy ansible for?" 

Starscream hissed, " _What does it matter?_ " Like his words were snake venom and he was trying to sink them in as deeply as he could. "You're not going to work on it anymore. Why would you? I've misled you. I've lied to you. Make up your own story. I'm sure you can imagine plenty of sufficiently awful things." He stormed past Wheeljack to the door. 

" _Don't._ " Wheeljack caught Starscream's arm as he passed. Starscream froze up, tensed like he wanted to push Wheeljack away, but for a moment, didn't. Wheeljack was hypercognizant of the texture of Starscream's paint under his hand. "Yeah, you're right; I _can_ imagine plenty of awful things. And you go out of your way to make them easy to imagine. But I've known you long enough to know that, no matter what it is you're up to, it's not half as bad as you want to make everyone believe it is. You've _never_ been as big a villain as you try to look like." 

Starscream stared at Wheeljack. His expression was some desperate mix of fury and bafflement and hope, and Wheeljack had no idea what to make of it, so he forged on: "I don't _wanna_ assume the worst about you, Starscream. The worst is never true. So just... tell me why you needed the—" 

Some pressure valve burst; Starscream exploded. "It's _you_! Okay?! _You're_ the one I did this for! I'm trying to get you _out!_ " 

Wheeljack's words stuck in his throat. 

Starscream shoved Wheeljack off. (Wheeljack registered, vaguely, that sometime while he'd been holding Starscream's arm, Starscream's body had changed completely, to the one Starscream had been wearing when Wheeljack had woken from his coma to be told Starscream was the new leader of Cybertron.) "The goal is to get you out—out of infraspace, back into the real world. I _clawed my way_ into the Afterspark to save you. All right? _Not_ to get an engineer—I don't need a damn engineer, I can go wherever I want—but to get _you_! And to get you to work on the energy ansible, because _I_ don't know enough to do it, but I _do_ know enough to know that _this_ ," he pointed, "this is your best chance of getting home!" 

All that, to help _Wheeljack?_ Wheeljack had known whatever Starscream had been up to couldn't have been as bad as his automatic suspicions (his 60% Autobot suspicions) had wanted to say they were, but to help _him?_ Starscream started pacing; Wheeljack sank down on a chair that was just a little too short for the average Cybertronian. 

"The other Autobots already tried to get out," Starscream said. "They can't. We all know that the sky is the way out—it's just an inside-out black hole. The Autobots tried climbing the vacuum hoses to get up to it, they tried sending up Quickswitch in jet mode—nothing. The closer you get to the sky, the heavier gravity gets. I'm the only one it doesn't affect, and _I don't know why._ It _does_ affect my passengers—I tried flying Blurr up and couldn't carry his weight. If you want to make it out, it's the energy ansible or nothing!" 

"Why?" 

Starscream threw his hands up. "I don't know why! I haven't studied black holes! Go ask Shockwave, if you two are such good friends now—" 

" _No,_ not that," Wheeljack said. "It's obvious to anyone who has a passing familiarity with quantum engineering in curved spacetime that an energy ansible is the only way to get supercompressed matter out of a black hole." 

"Oh," Starscream said uncertainly, "right, _obviously_." 

"I mean why are you going to all this trouble to get me out?" 

Starscream stopped pacing. That was, evidently, another question for which he hadn't prepared an answer. "Because I—" He cut off sharply. "Because you... deserve so much more than to be just another dead unsung hero." 

Starscream meant it. Everything about him screamed that he meant it; the way his voice went quiet and shy, the way he shifted his weight uncomfortably during the admission, they way he couldn't even look at Wheeljack even though his optics were so bright. 

However, it wasn't what Starscream said that made Wheeljack's spark spin faster. It was what he'd stopped saying. 

Infraspace was so quiet when neither one of them was talking. No wind outside, no distant sounds of vehicles and pedestrians, nothing mechanical shifting inside the building—not even electricity humming through the probably-magic lights. It was so quiet Wheeljack could hear the fans working in Starscream's body, the hiss of the combustion chambers in his thrusters nervously turning on and off. 

Quietly, Wheeljack asked, "Why didn't you just say you wanted—" he meant to say _to help me_ , he should have said _to help me_ , but instead he said, "me?" 

And they both winced, because you couldn't bandy about that sort of honesty with Starscream. Throwing too much honesty at him at once was like flashing your headlights in a nocturnal creature's optics. 

Starscream laughed a nervous, rattly laugh, and that was when Wheeljack knew that he was going to get an honest answer back. "It doesn't work like that for me," he said, with a sardonic smile. "The only way I ever get what I want is lying." 

"I'm gonna sock everyone who made you believe that," Wheeljack said hotly. He sat back in his chair and spread his hands wide. "If you wanted _me_ , you only had to _ask_!" 

There was a long moment of silence, while they were both equally shocked by the words that had just come out of Wheeljack. 

And a second long moment while they figured out which one of them was going to mildly freak out over it first. 

Wheeljack figured that if he was the one who freaked out, Starscream would think he hadn't meant it—and he _had_ meant it; he just hadn't known he was going to mean it until after he'd said it. So it couldn't be him. Instead, he raised his outstretched hands an inch higher, and said, firmly, "Yeah!" 

And Starscream shrieked, "You _what_? Since _when_?!" 

"I—have no idea at all!" The outstretched hands became a shrug. "You give off these— _really_ intense off-the-market vibes, so I sort of... you know..." 

Starscream gaped at Wheeljack. And then started laughing. He clapped a hand over his mouth, laughing so hard that he had to lean against the energy ansible. He slowly slid to the floor, and Wheeljack stood up, not quite sure if he should be helping Starscream back up, watching him fall, or joining him. 

Joining him, he decided. Wheeljack sat down next to Starscream, and tentatively leaned their shoulders together. Starscream stiffened; then relaxed with an obvious conscious effort, his wings and plating shifting minutely. He'd stopped laughing, but his hand hadn't uncovered his mouth yet. Behind it, Wheeljack could glimpse a bit of the same frightened, frantic smile he'd seen when Wheeljack had touched Starscream's waist and Starscream had escaped out a window. 

"Hey," Wheeljack said. He wanted to follow up with something reassuring, but wasn't sure what. But Starscream was looking at him, now. So after a moment too long of silence, he asked, "What happened to your other body?" He pointed at the far more angular frame that had replaced it. "You were wearing the other one when I came in." 

"Oh. Yeah, that's—something else I can do now." Starscream lowered his hand and shrugged—it felt like static danced between their shoulders. "It's probably all connected, somehow." 

"No, I know that you _can_ do it; the Autobots told me," Wheeljack said. "Why'd you switch, though?" 

"Oh. Yeah." Starscream glanced down at himself. "You like it?" 

It was dawning on Wheeljack that Starscream had asked for his opinion every single time Starscream switched up his frame since Wheeljack had woken up here. "I—sure. It's fine." 

"You said it wasn't bad," Starscream said, "the first time you saw me in it. So." He shrugged. "You know." 

It was dawning on Wheeljack that Starscream had been asking what he thought for a lot longer than he realized. "It's _not_ bad," he said, "but you called that other one your 'true body,' right?" 

"Oh. Yeah." Starscream looked at the floor. "Yeah. So I'm told." 

They were silent for a moment. Wheeljack wasn't sure what else to say. This was nowhere near where he'd expected his day (week? afterlife?) to go. Should they be talking relationships, now? Dates? Dealbreakers? Hammer out cross-faction courting expectations? Was Wheeljack going to have to duel Megatron for permission to conjugate Starscream? Was it too early to think about— 

"I thought," Starscream said, "if I could get my true body, I'd feel... better. Like a better person. Like the person I'm supposed to be. Instead, I just feel more like me than ever." He grimaced, like that was some grotesquely unfair punishment. 

"Well," Wheeljack said carefully, "who else are you supposed to feel like?" 

Starscream snorted. 

"I'm not kidding. You can—you know—be someone worth being without becoming somebody else." Wheeljack was more accustomed to saving the worth-affirming speeches for the engineers and inventors under him that liked to bounce between boisterous arrogance and crippling performance anxiety—Brainstorm came to mind—but he got the impression these were things that no one else had ever bothered to say to Starscream. " _You're_ someone worth being." 

"What makes you so sure? You're only getting the outside view. You aren't me." 

"No. But I _do_ know you're someone worth knowing. Which is close enough." 

Wheeljack didn't know if Starscream bought that answer, but he _did_ stop talking. Stunned silent or considering it? 

He felt Starscream readjust against his shoulder, and glanced over. Starscream's body had shifted again, back to curvy and blue. He was resting his head against the energy ansible, a dark, thoughtful look on his face, as he gazed at the window. Wheeljack leaned his head on the energy ansible as well, wondered if that look was a good thing, and wondered if he'd said the right thing. 

Starscream's fingertips were warm as they hesitantly brushed over the back of Wheeljack's knuckles, waiting for an invitation to go farther. Wheeljack laced their hands together. 

Wheeljack's spark whirled so fast it felt like a spinning top, dancing in circles around the room. 

* * *

Removing the turbines from the other energy ansible, it turned out, was a two person job. They were so deep in the machinery, Wheeljack griped, that he couldn't lean into the casing that far without losing his balance and falling in. Maybe he could open up the casing from the other side and try to remove them that way— 

—or Starscream could serve as a counterbalance, Starscream suggested. 

After a bit of interrogation, Wheeljack figured out what he meant by that: Starscream would put his hands on Wheeljack's waist and lean back, so that Wheeljack could lean forward and his center of balance would still stay far enough back that he wouldn't fall into the energy ansible. Which sounded to Wheeljack a whole lot like Starscream's way of seeing whether or not he could get away with getting his hands on Wheeljack yet. 

"We did this all the time in the Decepticons," Starscream insisted, all wide optics and faux innocence. "We're all quite accomplished at jury-rigged mechanics, you know." 

"Uh- _huh._ Because that's what the Decepticons are known for, isn't it? Getting their hands all over each other in the name of teamwork and cooperation." 

Beneath the faux innocence, something mischievous glinted in Starscream's optics. "Well. It certainly helps if you find a partner you _like_." 

And so they extracted the turbines like that: Wheeljack leaning into the energy ansible, Starscream holding tight to his waist, their hips inching way too close to each other to not be distracting, and Wheeljack pretending he didn't know Starscream was wearing that grin he wore whenever he knew he was getting away with something wicked. 

"And the best part is," Starscream said cheerily, "I'll bet you anything Shockwave won't be able to get back into infraspace once this energy ansible doesn't work anymore." 

"What's it matter? We're not going to be here much longer either." 

"I know. But I like knowing he doesn't have nice things." 

* * *

"So," Starscream said, breaking the silence. He and Wheeljack had been studiously soldering new wiring into the energy ansible for... however long, now. "Bumblebee tells me that, when Autobots are courting, generally the one kicking things off does so by giving the object of his, erm, affections," (he mumbled the word, like he wasn't entirely confident in saying it yet) "a sonnet he wrote, and a really cool rock. Like—an impressive geode, or a lab sapphire grown in an interesting shape. He's messing with me, right?" 

"Oh, yeah, completely." Wheeljack used up the last of his roll of solder, tossed it over his shoulder, and walked over to their supplies to grab another. "Need more solder?" 

"I'm good." 

"However," Wheeljack said, "if you _wanted_ to give me a really cool rock, I'd definitely be thrilled." 

"Oh yeah? Would it win me points?" 

"Oh, beaucoup points." He sat back down and continued soldering. "You talked to Bumblebee? When?" 

"Made a trip while you were collecting all that sheet metal. I don't know why I bothered to update him. All I got was razzing and completely fake advice." 

"I dunno... that rock idea..." 

Starscream huffed, and they lapsed into silence again as they worked. 

"... Is that what we're doing now?" Wheeljack asked. "Courting? Officially, I mean?" 

"I... I don't know." Starscream paused, then added, in a mumble, "I've never really done this before. A couple times, kinda, but they don't really count. I was planning to use and backstab them." 

"Same," Wheeljack admitted, "except for the using-and-backstabbing part." 

"I don't get..." Starscream shook his head. "I know that I'm a pile of red flags stitched in the shape of a jet. I don't know why you'd want to court me. Or be courted by me. I don't know if that's a unilateral or bilateral thing." 

Wheeljack shrugged. "If you were planning to betray me, you wouldn't have _told_ me you'd betrayed the last couple 'bots you courted, right?" 

"I told the second one about the first one." 

"I'll take my chances." 

The smile Starscream graced Wheeljack with could have illuminated every hall of a Metrotitan. "Courting, then." 

He wondered what in the world Starscream had told Bumblebee, if he _hadn't_ told him that they were already courting. 

He wondered what it was like, traveling back from infraspace to the real world. Was it like traveling through a wormhole? A space bridge? Could Starscream feel the black hole—what was that like? 

Wheeljack figured he'd be finding out soon enough. 

* * *

"Energy stable?" 

Starscream checked the alien console, referring back to the notes they'd attached above it explaining what the readouts meant. "Check." 

"Ignition ready?" 

Starscream looked at the massive block of dissected-and-recombined lighters bound into their patchwork machine with electrical tape. "Check, I hope." Starscream glanced at Wheeljack. "Patient prepped?" 

Wheeljack looked down at the dozens of wires dangling from his open spark casing. "Check. I hope." 

Starscream stepped back from the energy ansible and stood next to Wheeljack, and together they looked over their work. It was an absolute mess. 

"Are we ready?" Starscream asked. 

Wheeljack surveyed the mess critically. Everything appeared to be connected, and nothing was throwing off sparks, so... "If I commed up the break room in Kimia and asked whoever was there if they thought it was ready, three out of five of them would say yes." 

"And that means...?" 

"We go for it." 

Starscream gave Wheeljack an alarmed look. "Is that how Autobots usually do science? Field testing is decided by three out of five 'bots on their break?" 

"It's the polar opposite of the Shockwave method. I see that as a plus," Wheeljack said. "Besides, what's the worst thing a malfunctioning energy ansible could do? Kill me?" 

Starscream went over to the energy ansible's controls, but muttered, "In this place? I wouldn't rule out the possibility." 

”It’s as ready as it’s gonna be,” Wheeljack said. “Which means…” He rummaged around under his armor. 

”What? Means what?” Starscream’s optics lit up in surprise when he saw Wheeljack extract the can of engex, and he laughed. “I thought you gave it back.” 

”Blurr didn’t want it. C’mon. Split?” 

”You first. I’m prepping the energy ansible.” It slowly started to hum to life as Starscream powered it up. 

Wheeljack popped open the can, slid his mask half off, and chugged down half the can—trying to ignore how keenly Starscream watched his rarely-exposed face as he drank. When he was done, he clicked his mask back in place and held the rest out to Starscream. 

Starscream’s fingers brushed Wheeljack’s as he took the can, and Wheeljack found his gaze caught by Starscream’s. Starscream’s new optics were the color of a deep pool of energon, and just as full of life and energy just waiting to be unleashed. They were the most alive thing in infraspace. 

Starscream pressed his lips where Wheeljack’s had been and drained the can, and smirked when Wheeljack tried to cover up a spontaneous engine rev by clearing his throat. Later—he could follow up on that later. When they were out of here. 

"Come on! Just turn it on." Wheeljack gave Starscream an encouraging grin, optics curving. "I'll see you on the other side." 

Starscream rolled his optics, but he was still smirking. "No dying this time," he commanded. "I'll see you around Mars." Starscream flipped the energy ansible on. 

"Hold on. _Mars?_ " 

And then it powered on. It felt like a vacuum sucking his spark out of its casing, and all the electricity in his frame out with his spark. The engex he’d just drank vaporized. His vision swam and darkened. The tips of his fingers were just going numb when he was ripped free from his frame and hurdled away into nothingness. 

* * *

Wheeljack wondered how many people in the galaxy had gotten to see the view from the inside of a black hole coming out. It was like a billion points of light flying straight through him, like rain whipped by the wind, as he flew the wrong way through the event horizon. 

And then he was free, spinning through space, stars whirling around him, a sun flashing in and out of his view, and he was struck by the dizzying wondrous sense of _space_ —of open space, of existence and energy and connection and life. 

And then he was falling, slowly, back toward the event horizon. 

Starscream caught his hand. "You made it!" 

Slowly he stopped falling and stopped spinning. Starscream held him up, weightless, in defiance of the black hole's gravity, and beamed at him. Literally beamed at him. The sun was beaming through his face. "You're see-through?" 

" _We're_ see-through," Starscream said. "We're incorporeal, at the moment." 

"Uh." Wheeljack looked down at his body, and saw the lights of the event horizon spinning through his chest. "I see that." 

"Temporary problem," Starscream said dismissively. "I'm in contact with Bumblebee—he's the only one I can talk to directly, without possessing a TV or anything—" 

"You can _possess_ a _TV?_ " 

Starscream seized Wheeljack's other hand, squeezed them both, and gushed, "It's _amazing._ I've _got_ to show you how to travel through the Internet; there's _so many things_ we can do like this—anyway. Bumblebee can get us to Windblade—they're friends now, we can beg a favor off of her— _she_ can get us to Nautica, and Nautica can get us to _Brainstorm._ " 

"Uh-huh." Okay. That was a whole lot of travel for someone who'd been dead four minutes ago—was time passing again?—but Starscream had clearly thought this out. "And, Brainstorm will give us...?" 

"His expertise on mechs that are dead but still alive—which I think is as close as we're going to get to expertise on whatever _we_ currently are—and hopefully, eventually, new bodies." 

"Really? We're trusting Brainstorm to make our bodies?" Wheeljack asked. "You know there's an apocalyptic events scale named after him, right?" 

"What's the worst thing he could do? Kill us?" Starscream winked. 

Wheeljack laughed. "If _anyone_ could find a way..." 

"Then it's a good thing I have an expert engineer with me to check my future body for explosives." Starscream squeezed Wheeljack's hands again. "Ready to go?" 

Wheeljack squeezed back. "Ready." 

Without needing his thrusters, propelled by his own energy and will, Starscream flew away from the black hole and pulled Wheeljack along with him; two sparks shot through the sky toward Earth.

**Author's Note:**

> Also on [tumblr](http://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/181752930362/the-dead-unsung-heroes-club)!


End file.
